Organizers of a recall effort against Grand Traverse County Prosecuting Attorney Noelle Moeggenberg are planning their next steps, after they failed to get enough signatures on petitions to put the question on the ballot.
What those next steps are, organizers are not yet saying.
“Until we've exhausted all of our avenues, we're not really going to disclose a ton of information about … what specifically our next steps are,” organizer Andrea Flowers said.
The signature-gathering effort started just over 60 days ago after a petition from Flowers and other critics was approved by the Board of State Canvassers. Recall organizers had until Friday to gather around 14,000 signatures from Grand Traverse County residents.
That number is a little over the required amount, to provide a buffer in case some of the signatures are invalid.
While IPR asked multiple times, Flowers did not disclose how many signatures were gathered.
The petition came together after Flowers and others had cases go before Moeggenberg in court, resulting in plea bargains that families felt were unfair to victims and their families.
Flowers said Moeggenberg failed to properly investigate the sexual abuse of her 4-year-old granddaughter and then offered the alleged abuser a plea deal of less than a year.
In another case, Grand Traverse County resident and mother Brenda DeKuiper argued that Moeggenberg failed to adequately investigate a car accident that resulted in her son’s death. DeKuiper said in a previous interview with IPR that the prosecuting attorney then failed to consult with the victim’s family before reaching a plea agreement with the driver at fault.
The petition approved by the Board of State Canvassers includes language that would allow two additional 60-day windows to collect more signatures. So far, however, organizers have held back on a second round of signature gathering.
“Before we would start, we want to have a good strategy in place as far as what we've kind of learned,” Flowers said. “[We would want to] have more of a concrete plan before we started that 60-day window.”
If organizers gather enough signatures in another 60-day round, a question of whether to recall Moeggenberg would appear on Grand Traverse County ballots for this November’s election.
IPR reached out to Moeggenberg for comment, but she did not respond in time for this story.
